When you come up as a student, there are a lot of students in your class and maybe one or two are disruptive, but those disruptive students mess up the whole class. So from a young age, students don’t get a lot of educational experience. There are so many other factors around, like gangs and drugs. There are just a lot of things that prohibit learning.

Kwame Gilbert, 18, of Paterson, on whether urban schools in N.J. are prepared for newly rigorous high school graduation requirements. (The Record today.)